I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive.
Interpretation
The quote reflects how fictional characters can evoke deeper emotional connections than some real people.
Fernando Pessoa expresses the idea that the connections we forge with fictional characters and artistic representations can often be more profound than those we have with real individuals in our lives. He critiques the superficiality of human relationships, likening them to mere physical beings devoid of true emotional substance, suggesting that our bonds with imaginative creations can offer richer experiences than those with 'flesh and blood' humans.
In practice
In a speech about the power of literature, one might reference this quote to illustrate the emotional depth found in storytelling.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.
The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.
In North America, the greatest threat to the Jewish people is not the external force of antisemitism, but the internal forces of apathy, inertia and ignorance of our own heritage.
The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual; everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.
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